Well, I've been writing this book on 9 days (I started a while longer than that ago, but I didn't write every day), and I've finally figured out where it's going. For once, I know what to write later when I get home. It's going to be longer than Stepping Forward, but it'll still be a novella. The plot isn't too complicated, but I don't intend it to be. It's sort of a confession of a book, an examination of the lives of friends, of love and longing and pain, and once again something that pushes into the boundaries of hypthetics, creating things in people that aren't there, or that aren't seen, at least.
In saying that... I had a plan to show a particular side of a character, who was based somewhat on a friend, because that side of him is almost non-existent as far as most of us have seen. Only, last night he showed it off, without really knowing that nobody had seen it much. I won't go into too much detail on it, but I thought it was a nice coincidence, and it just means that my character is a little more real than I'd first imagined.
When I get home, I'll be acting the arse and recreating a series of events that I found quite hilarious. If I finish the chapter tonight, I'll be moving on to something a little more difficult, which I'm not entirely looking forward to, except for the exploration part of the plot. That'll probably be carried into the next writing session, tomorrow morning, which will also see the start of the side of the aforementioned character that I'd wanted to show. The last chapter might also get written, if I focus enough. I'm working at five, so I have a good few hours to get work done on this thing. I only wanted to get it done by Sunday night, but now that I know where it's going I think I can finish before I go to work on Friday, or at the latest when I come home from a seperate shift on Saturday afternoon.
After that, the fun begins with another book. This one will probably be another novella - I don't plan on publishing them, but I like writing them for the experiences involved. You know, writing a book, creating characters, exploring ideas of friendship, love, life, death, mystery, getting to know people better. It's all fun, even if some of it is quite depressing. In fact, the next one is by and large all death. It's called The Great Leap. I actually can't wait to get started on it. I imagine it'll be of a similar length to Stepping Forward, but the ideas in it are a lot more difficult to get a grasp of. It calls into question matters of faith, and presents a continuous idea of always having a second chance. So, depressing but still with a bit of hope.
After that... Dignity. Though I may finish the second draft of Meet Sam instead. I'll have six days off work to get The Great Leap written, which is plenty of time if I have no plans (so far I have one plan, in the evening, when I rarely write anyway). Yeah, I think I'll finish Meet Sam. It could do with completion. When Dignity is written, then, I'll do the edits of Meet Sam, then start on my parody novel, The Masked Expellator, which looks at the life of a vigilante with a strange ability to throw up at will, and how he actually becomes a real hero. It's going to be utterly ridiculous, of course, but fun to write.
When all this is done - Meet Sam, Stepping Forward, The Great Leap, Dignity, The Masked Expellator and Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch - I'll be printing them in matching books, the difference being the colour of the cover, and perhaps some clip art on the inside. The books will be fun to have, and handy for having people read them. Meet Sam and Dignity are sort of free-for-alls, though I think a couple of people will want to read them first. Stepping Forward is currently in the possession of someone, who'll be the only person to read it until it gets a seal of approval. This is actually the same as The Great Leap, though I may make changes to my original idea to make it less like real life. Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch has to be read by two people before I show anyone else, and The Masked Expellator will find itself in the possession of the person who I first presented the idea to.
I've even kind of figured out the dedications... Meet Sam is just for friends in general, Dignity being for my fellow students at college, Stepping Forward for a particualr friend, Love is a... for two friends, The Masked Expellator for the person who gave me the idea, The Great Leap being for the friends who helped me through the darkest periods of my life (they won't be named individually.)
Okay... that was weird. I don't know how all that happened from I know where my book is going! I apologise. My ramblings generally just happen. Still, I hope you're enjoying following me on my journey to printing a number of books, single copies only. This summer will be amazing if I can get all this work done!
Showing posts with label love is a remarkably destructive bitch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love is a remarkably destructive bitch. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Writing Days
I have a very particular writing day; I've gotten myself into a habit, based on how tired I am at particular times of the day. I can't write too much at night, anymore, unless I'm still in the swing of things. I usually wake between seven and eight in the morning, so I'll shower by nine or shortly afterwards and get going for the day. I got over three thousand words done today. That's not my best, but I'd be more than happy to get that done every day.
Every day I write is the same, assuming I wasn't out the day before, and therefore extra tired. Admittedly, the tiredness can carry on for a few days. I've noticed two day gaps developing in my writing. Anyway, every day is the same if I'm not tired; I write after my shower (and my breakfast) until about one in the afternoon. At that point, I'll have lunch. I'll also have had about two or three cups of tea. I'm an addict at this stage. I'll get a cup at lunch, too, and one at hour later; by five or six, I'll have to stop to get dinner, and afterwards I'll be to tired to write anymore, as the day will have stretched on.
My writing day is also filled with music. I know some people can't write with music playing - I can't write poetry with music playing, for instance - but when it comes to fiction, I have to have music playing. I like my little writing montages. Many days it's the same songs, over and over again, a playlist on YouTube of songs recommended by Liam (he has the best and most varied taste in music out of anyone I know); unfortunately, the playlist is twelve songs long. So I switch between that, Alex Day's album on his website, and The Doors. Today, I did something special. I wrote along to The Beatles. I never listen to The Beatles. Ever. But I loved it. (It was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club) I also played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; I'm familiar with a few of the songs, but played as a whole... wow! The next step is to get my hands on a Bruce Springsteen album, more of The Beatles, a Bob Dylan album or two and something by Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently they're all awesome.
Writing along to music like this, I can get through a story in no time. It's my job, though I don't get paid. I just work throughout the day, getting lots written on my current work in progress, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. If I'm forgetting all about modesty, it's a pretty good book. I need to finish it within the next couple of weeks, though, because I have three more books I want to write before the summer's over, and I'd also like to get the second draft for Meet Sam written. I think that'll be next, so that when I've written the next of my books, The Great Leap, and probably Dignity, too, I'll be coming back to it nice and fresh. Once the edits on the second draft are done, I'll be working on a new idea, fresh off the press last night: The Masked Expellator. It's a parody superhero novel. I blame Fiona for it.
As you can tell, I'm a little bit busy, and still working weekends. Miley Cyrus might be getting a job soon, so my Adventureland days with her may soon be coming to an end... scratch that, they'll be coming to a pause. Adventureland doesn't end, it only takes a short break. We'll make sure to get more stuff done during the college year. It'll be awesome. The only upside for me (upside for her being money) is that I'll have lots of time to write in between the less frequent plans with other friends, so I should be able to get at least Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch written. Hopefully by the end of the month. I'd like to write The Great Leap and Dignity before I go back, but I'd have to have many days like today, or like June 25th - 9385 words that day! I'd be writing a novel a week if I wrote like that all the time!
But there you have it: my routine and my goals. My writing will slow down considerably once I go back to college, so I want to get as much done as possible within the next couple of months. The upside, of course, is that I have breaks of this length every year. For the rest of my life. (assuming I finish college and get a job as a teacher, and that I don't end up working as a writer full time, in which case I have a "break" like this for the rest of my life, during which I can write a dozen first drafts a year if I wanted to.)
Actually, I like that idea in the brackets. See, I don't just write novels. I write novellas too, now. They're shorter, but I still manage to get some depth into them. My trick is to limit the number of characters in them, so that there's not too much to have to do. I had two main characters in one I wrote recently called Stepping Forward, with a grand total of seven side characters, with only two of them having any narrative focus at all. And it's quite awesome, if I do say so myself. The only printed copy of it is in the possession of a friend for him to read before I can show anyone else.
Novellas are a wonderful thing, though. I mean, less publishers are likely to print them, but they're still fun to write, and if I actually become a successful, popular author, a publisher might take a chance with something like Stepping Forward, or it'd be published as a serial novella, or with two or three other books in one volume. Something cool like that.
Now I'm getting myself all caught up in hypothetics, again. As you can see, writing days leave me with lots of time to think too much. I've been told I do that too much, anyway. I'll leave this blog post here, before I write all about my plans for WORLD DOMINATION.
Every day I write is the same, assuming I wasn't out the day before, and therefore extra tired. Admittedly, the tiredness can carry on for a few days. I've noticed two day gaps developing in my writing. Anyway, every day is the same if I'm not tired; I write after my shower (and my breakfast) until about one in the afternoon. At that point, I'll have lunch. I'll also have had about two or three cups of tea. I'm an addict at this stage. I'll get a cup at lunch, too, and one at hour later; by five or six, I'll have to stop to get dinner, and afterwards I'll be to tired to write anymore, as the day will have stretched on.
My writing day is also filled with music. I know some people can't write with music playing - I can't write poetry with music playing, for instance - but when it comes to fiction, I have to have music playing. I like my little writing montages. Many days it's the same songs, over and over again, a playlist on YouTube of songs recommended by Liam (he has the best and most varied taste in music out of anyone I know); unfortunately, the playlist is twelve songs long. So I switch between that, Alex Day's album on his website, and The Doors. Today, I did something special. I wrote along to The Beatles. I never listen to The Beatles. Ever. But I loved it. (It was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club) I also played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; I'm familiar with a few of the songs, but played as a whole... wow! The next step is to get my hands on a Bruce Springsteen album, more of The Beatles, a Bob Dylan album or two and something by Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently they're all awesome.
Writing along to music like this, I can get through a story in no time. It's my job, though I don't get paid. I just work throughout the day, getting lots written on my current work in progress, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. If I'm forgetting all about modesty, it's a pretty good book. I need to finish it within the next couple of weeks, though, because I have three more books I want to write before the summer's over, and I'd also like to get the second draft for Meet Sam written. I think that'll be next, so that when I've written the next of my books, The Great Leap, and probably Dignity, too, I'll be coming back to it nice and fresh. Once the edits on the second draft are done, I'll be working on a new idea, fresh off the press last night: The Masked Expellator. It's a parody superhero novel. I blame Fiona for it.
As you can tell, I'm a little bit busy, and still working weekends. Miley Cyrus might be getting a job soon, so my Adventureland days with her may soon be coming to an end... scratch that, they'll be coming to a pause. Adventureland doesn't end, it only takes a short break. We'll make sure to get more stuff done during the college year. It'll be awesome. The only upside for me (upside for her being money) is that I'll have lots of time to write in between the less frequent plans with other friends, so I should be able to get at least Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch written. Hopefully by the end of the month. I'd like to write The Great Leap and Dignity before I go back, but I'd have to have many days like today, or like June 25th - 9385 words that day! I'd be writing a novel a week if I wrote like that all the time!
But there you have it: my routine and my goals. My writing will slow down considerably once I go back to college, so I want to get as much done as possible within the next couple of months. The upside, of course, is that I have breaks of this length every year. For the rest of my life. (assuming I finish college and get a job as a teacher, and that I don't end up working as a writer full time, in which case I have a "break" like this for the rest of my life, during which I can write a dozen first drafts a year if I wanted to.)
Actually, I like that idea in the brackets. See, I don't just write novels. I write novellas too, now. They're shorter, but I still manage to get some depth into them. My trick is to limit the number of characters in them, so that there's not too much to have to do. I had two main characters in one I wrote recently called Stepping Forward, with a grand total of seven side characters, with only two of them having any narrative focus at all. And it's quite awesome, if I do say so myself. The only printed copy of it is in the possession of a friend for him to read before I can show anyone else.
Novellas are a wonderful thing, though. I mean, less publishers are likely to print them, but they're still fun to write, and if I actually become a successful, popular author, a publisher might take a chance with something like Stepping Forward, or it'd be published as a serial novella, or with two or three other books in one volume. Something cool like that.
Now I'm getting myself all caught up in hypothetics, again. As you can see, writing days leave me with lots of time to think too much. I've been told I do that too much, anyway. I'll leave this blog post here, before I write all about my plans for WORLD DOMINATION.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch, Extract
Love is a remarkably destructive bitch. It comes and goes and all the time leaves heart ache for someone. Someone. Always. Hurts. That is the truth about love. It’s not music where there is none. It’s not getting that funny little feeling in your stomach when you see that certain someone. Love isn’t that first kiss under the apple tree or walking down a beach holding hands. Drunk people hold hands all the time. Children kiss under apple trees for a dare. They aren’t love, and they never will be.
Love isn’t a song on the radio that two people adore.
Love isn’t roses on Valentine’s Day. Roses are soft, silent death and you just don’t know it. Kill the bitch if that’s how you want to be. That isn’t love. That’s murder.
The point, the truth, is that love hurts too much for us to really logically wish to pursue it. And yet, humans as we are, we look for love everywhere we go. We read books on the matter, watch films about it, hear some poems about it. We do everything we can to find love, and we’re always looking in the wrong place. And it is in this truth that I present to you a case of love, that I ask you a question I’ve been wondering for some time now. What is love, but loss?
Andrew didn’t save those words; he didn’t post them online, he didn’t print them off. If he needed them, he’d write them again, though he had his doubts about that: he would never need – really need – a short essay on how love is a bitch in all its forms, and he wouldn’t remember exactly what’d written, and nothing could ever come out like that again. With a sigh of resignation, he left the computer room.
His full name was Andrew McCourt. He was a closet musician; that’s not to say he played music in his closet – he called it a wardrobe, anyway – but that he never told anyone about it. A lime green ukulele was forever hidden from his parents and their prying eyes, and he only played when he was alone. Andrew McCourt had much experience with being alone. Most people would find that evident in his unnaturally grim look on the world of love. Everyone would find it strange, if they knew how he felt about love, that he mostly played love songs.
Andrew couldn’t sing for shit, as far as he was concerned. With a few thousand songs at his disposal, he was sure he could maybe sing...three. He could sing three of the songs. He could play a dozen times more, but when it came to actually hitting any of the notes, and sounding good at the same time, Andrew McCourt was a lost cause.
He went to a small college locked away in a tiny pocket of space, away from spying eyes and judgemental pricks, in one of the greater suburban areas of Dublin, studying a sorry combination of music and religion and pretending he knew what he was doing. He didn’t have a clue about composition, and even less of one about anything they did in religion. He didn’t care for God, very much. God hadn’t done him any favours past creation, and even that was called into question.
Andrew’s parents accidentally had sex with each other, thinking they were different people. The miracle of Andrew’s conception.
He didn’t tell everyone that story. He refused to let people know that he wasn’t an accident in the same way they were – that the lovely people at the condom factory had made a few errors back in the late eighties and early nineties; he wished he didn’t know that he was a mistake of human judgement and manufacturing defaults at the same time. While they were sober. Allegedly.
What he did tell them was that he had a very good reason for getting sloshed, and that maybe he’d tell them some day. He would in his arse; Andrew knew what to tell people and what not to tell people. In his years of experience, limited though they may be at the age of eighteen, he’d discovered that the trick to faking happiness is to hide everything that might make you unhappy. It had worked so far.
He surrounded himself with the strangest bunch of people he’d ever thought possible; they all had their own problems, of course, because people are born for trouble; they all had their little idiosyncrasies that drove other people insane; they had all been bitten by the love bug at some stage in their time in the college. Not Andrew. Andrew was a miserable child when it came to love. Andrew swatted the love bug before it had a chance to hang around for too long.
----------
This has been the opening extract for my new WIP, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. I hope it has kept you suitably amused.
Love isn’t a song on the radio that two people adore.
Love isn’t roses on Valentine’s Day. Roses are soft, silent death and you just don’t know it. Kill the bitch if that’s how you want to be. That isn’t love. That’s murder.
The point, the truth, is that love hurts too much for us to really logically wish to pursue it. And yet, humans as we are, we look for love everywhere we go. We read books on the matter, watch films about it, hear some poems about it. We do everything we can to find love, and we’re always looking in the wrong place. And it is in this truth that I present to you a case of love, that I ask you a question I’ve been wondering for some time now. What is love, but loss?
Andrew didn’t save those words; he didn’t post them online, he didn’t print them off. If he needed them, he’d write them again, though he had his doubts about that: he would never need – really need – a short essay on how love is a bitch in all its forms, and he wouldn’t remember exactly what’d written, and nothing could ever come out like that again. With a sigh of resignation, he left the computer room.
His full name was Andrew McCourt. He was a closet musician; that’s not to say he played music in his closet – he called it a wardrobe, anyway – but that he never told anyone about it. A lime green ukulele was forever hidden from his parents and their prying eyes, and he only played when he was alone. Andrew McCourt had much experience with being alone. Most people would find that evident in his unnaturally grim look on the world of love. Everyone would find it strange, if they knew how he felt about love, that he mostly played love songs.
Andrew couldn’t sing for shit, as far as he was concerned. With a few thousand songs at his disposal, he was sure he could maybe sing...three. He could sing three of the songs. He could play a dozen times more, but when it came to actually hitting any of the notes, and sounding good at the same time, Andrew McCourt was a lost cause.
He went to a small college locked away in a tiny pocket of space, away from spying eyes and judgemental pricks, in one of the greater suburban areas of Dublin, studying a sorry combination of music and religion and pretending he knew what he was doing. He didn’t have a clue about composition, and even less of one about anything they did in religion. He didn’t care for God, very much. God hadn’t done him any favours past creation, and even that was called into question.
Andrew’s parents accidentally had sex with each other, thinking they were different people. The miracle of Andrew’s conception.
He didn’t tell everyone that story. He refused to let people know that he wasn’t an accident in the same way they were – that the lovely people at the condom factory had made a few errors back in the late eighties and early nineties; he wished he didn’t know that he was a mistake of human judgement and manufacturing defaults at the same time. While they were sober. Allegedly.
What he did tell them was that he had a very good reason for getting sloshed, and that maybe he’d tell them some day. He would in his arse; Andrew knew what to tell people and what not to tell people. In his years of experience, limited though they may be at the age of eighteen, he’d discovered that the trick to faking happiness is to hide everything that might make you unhappy. It had worked so far.
He surrounded himself with the strangest bunch of people he’d ever thought possible; they all had their own problems, of course, because people are born for trouble; they all had their little idiosyncrasies that drove other people insane; they had all been bitten by the love bug at some stage in their time in the college. Not Andrew. Andrew was a miserable child when it came to love. Andrew swatted the love bug before it had a chance to hang around for too long.
----------
This has been the opening extract for my new WIP, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. I hope it has kept you suitably amused.
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